Alternately we could block the Suez Canal in the middle, without disturbing the sea access to Israel from the Indian Ocean. Blocking the Suez Canal in the middle also excludes the Holy Land from the Arabian Peninsula. Further, the blocking wall is short thus reducing the cost of saving the Holy Land for Israel alone drastically.
We lift the ship from the sea, transport it across the wall on wheels and float it in the canal. For the traffic on the opposite direction, we lift the ship from the canal, transport it across the wall on wheels and float it in the sea. The design of the system is described below.
1. The work force in Egypt increases for maintaining four or more floating decks used to lift and lower fully laden ships.
2. The electrical power required for lifting and lowering the ships would be generated and supplied by Egypt earning revenue.
3. The one mile wide top of the blocking wall offers prime real estate.
All the benefits accrue without in any way slowing the ship traffic using the Suez Canal.
Conceptual Design:
The Arab Shipbuilding And Repair Yard Company (ASRY) is located in Bahrain and is used to repair even ultra large capacity ships. We detail some aspects of ASRY as found in
http://www.asry.net/ here.
ASRY has one dry dock of length 375 meters, width 75 meters and depth 9 meters. The ship enters the dock floating on water and then rests on the floor of the dock when the water is pumped out. Ships up to 500,000 dwt could be berthed in the dry dock.
We design a floating deck such that the ship comes above the submerged surface of the floating deck. Once the ship is in position on the wheels on the top surface of the floating deck, the deck is raised to bring the rails in alignment with the rails on top of the wall. The ship on rails is dragged to the other side of the wall and is positioned on the top surface of the corresponding floating deck. Now the floating deck is lowered until the ship floats in water. The ship sails on its way.
We use two floating decks positioned at opposite sides of the wall to raise and lower the ship. Let us consider the design of the floating deck now.
Floating Deck:
The maximum weight to be handled is 500,000 tons. With 1 ton assumed to be 1000 Kg, and assuming the salt water to have a specific gravity of 1, the volume water with weight of 500,000 tons is 500,000,000 liters. One cubic meter is 1000 liters. The volume water is then 500,000 cubic meters.
We take the floating deck to be a square of 500 meters giving an area of 250,000 square meters. To displace a volume of 500,000 cubic meters of water, the deck needs to move 2 meters up or down.
The floating deck has a water tank of depth 4 meters or more. This tank is filled with enough water to keep the top surface of the floating deck at the same level as the top of the wall. We add 500,000 cubic meters of water corresponding to 500,000 tons. This corresponds to a ship of 500,000 tons sitting on the top of the floating deck. With the added weight the floating deck would sink in the ocean. We place concrete foundation below the floating deck so that the top of the sunken deck is at a level to receive the floating ship.
The ship is positioned over the floating deck such that it rests on the wheels. Now we pump the water out of the tank allowing the deck to rise. As the deck rises, the water displaced by the ship reduces and the ship is buoyed partially by the ocean and the remaining weight rests on the floating deck. As we pump out more water the deck continues to rise. When we have pumped out 500,000,000 liters of water, the top of the floating deck is at the same level as the top of the wall. Now the rails on the floating deck are aligned with the rails on the top of the wall. The ship could be hauled away.
As the load of the ship gets transferred to the wall, the floating deck would start rising above the level of the wall. We maintain the float at the same level by pumping water into the tank.
We design the tank of the floating deck to have more depth to handle additional equipment weight as described below.
Pumping System:
We use a common pump to design the pumping system. Larger capacity pumps could be used to improve the design.
http://allproducts.com/machine/pioneer/Product-2007413183156.html From the above, we use the PL-200A pump for our design. The pump has a standard capacity of 4 cubic meters per minute. It has a lift capability against 4 meters. Since the floating deck is not expected to move more than 3 meters, we believe these pumps would do.
A single PL-200A would need 125,000 minutes to pump 500,000 cubic meters of water. If we use 1000 pumps, they would need 125 minutes. Let us use 5,000 pumps to raise or lower the floating deck in 25 minutes.
Operation:
The positioning of the ship over the floating deck might take 15 minutes. We need 25 minutes to raise the floating deck. Let us say we need another 25 minutes to move the ship from the floating deck to the top of the wall.
The wall thickness decides the time to move the ship across the top of the wall. We assume this to be 1 mile and the time to move the ship to the edge of the floating deck on the other side is taken to be 30 minutes.
On the other floating deck we need a total of 25 + 25 + 15 minutes for moving the ship to the top of the floating deck, lowering the floating deck, and sailing the ship away.
Thus the total time for a ship to cross the wall is 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Conclusion:
It is proposed to build a wall with 1 mile thickness at the top to separate the Suez Canal from the sea at Tihama restoring the status of the Arabian Peninsula to its status at the time of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Such a restoration allows the Holy Land to support Muslims and non-Muslims.
The time taken by a ship to move from the sea to the canal or from the canal to the sea is less than 3 hours. The proposed solution is within the reach of current technology.
As the proposed solution would avert a clash between Muslims and Jews, and hopefully avoid the next World War, we suggest that all the nations share the cost of the project in proportion with their GDPs.